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Canopies of weaving branches met in various directions far above their heads, and through these the schooner glided with a silence that might have called up the idea of a Stygian freight.
Such, in the first half of the sixteenth century, was Cornelius Agrippa a doctor of divinity and a knight-at-arms; secret-service diplomatist to the Emperor Maximilian in Austria; astrologer, though unwilling, to his daughter Margaret, Regent of the Low Countries; writer on the occult sciences and of the famous "De Vanitate Scientiarum," and what not? who died miserably at the age of forty-nine, accused of magic by the Dominican monks from whom he had rescued a poor girl, who they were torturing on a charge of witchcraft; and by them hunted to death; nor to death only, for they spread the fable such as you may find in Delrio the Jesuit's "Disquisitions on Magic" that his little pet black dog was a familiar spirit, as Butler has it in "Hudibras": Agrippa kept a Stygian pug I' the garb and habit of a dog That was his taste; and the cur Read to th' occult philosopher, And taught him subtly to maintain All other sciences are vain.
A few profane Cavaliers might make his name the burthen of their malignant rhymes a few of the more scrupulous among the Saints might keep aloof in sanctified abhorrence of the 'Stygian sophister' but the great majority of the people lent a willing and reverential ear to his prophecies and prognostications.
All three laughed as they accepted his offer, assuring him that his suspicions were correct. For neither Kaffir laundrywoman or Hindu dhobi would go down any more to the washing troughs by the river, for fear of crossing that Stygian flood of blackness rivalling their own, supposing, as Beauvayse once suggested, that there is a third-class ferry for niggers and persons of colour?
"Tonight, before my Ethiop friends eat you, I shall tell you what has already befallen your wife and child, and what further plans I have for their futures." The Dance of Death Through the luxuriant, tangled vegetation of the Stygian jungle night a great lithe body made its way sinuously and in utter silence upon its soft padded feet.
No sooner did this affair transpire than his creditors assembled, and supposing it must be all over with him, though their bills had not yet become due, they resolved to keep a strict watch over him in fear that he might abscond. Roderigo, on his part, thinking that there was no other remedy, and feeling how deeply he was bound by the Stygian law, determined at all hazards to make his escape.
Only by marching up the pond shore until the pines across were south instead of east of me did I prove to myself that it was they and not the sea in very truth that I heard. Back again in the Stygian darkness of the grove it was easy to note how the pines protect their own. On the beach the smothering onrush of the gale beat me down, drove me before it.
Dim as those phantom ghosts of life that gleam And wander voiceless by the Stygian stream, Fair as it stands in fields Elysian, Ere down to flesh the immortal doth descend: If doubtful ever in the actual life Each contest here a victory crowns the end Of every nobler strife. Not from the strife itself to set thee free, But more to nerve doth victory Wave her rich garland from the ideal clime.
"You say I am mixing up the transactions of my time on earth with the story of my successors? It may be so. We take no count of a few centuries more or less in our dwelling by the darkling Stygian river.
It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, thou shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, paddling by the weedy wharf, with raucid voice, bawling "SCULLS, SCULLS:" to which, with waving hand, and majestic action, thou deignest no reply, other than in two curt monosyllables, "No: OARS."
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